Too Red to Die

Results tagged ‘ Matt Garza ’

Homer Bailey and the Reds look to gain ground on Milwaukee Brewers
The Reds will send Homer Bailey to the hill at Miller Park on Friday as they try to gain ground on the NL Central-leading Brewers. Milwaukee will counter with Matt Garza to open the three-game set. Source

Reds vs Brewers

Homer Bailey 34 | P
7 – 3 ERA 4.60
4 – 7 ERA 5.21 (Career vs MIL)
Bailey tossed eight strong innings to earn his seventh win Sunday against the Phillies, allowing one run on six hits while walking three and striking out seven. In 17 career starts against Milwaukee, he is 4-7 with a 5.21 ERA.

Matt Garza 22 | P
4 – 4 ERA 4.42
1 – 3 ERA 6.34 (Career vs CIN)
After posting a 5.00 ERA in April and 4.65 in May, he has allowed three earned runs in 12 1/3 innings so far in June, posting his first back-to-back victories in a Brewers uniform. But Garza is still grinding through games.

Kerry Wood might be leaving Chicago Cubs to sign with Philadelphia Phillies. If this happens it will go down as another move this offseason that will help the Cincinnati Reds in 2012 which they did not have to make. [Source]

Kerry Wood has a career 14-6 record against the Reds with a 2.85 ERA. With 201 strike outs while only giving up 59 walks in 161.1 IP and 47 games. He has a 4-3 record at Great American Ball Park and a 4.05 ERA with 66 strike outs and 17 walks along with only allowing 7 home runs in 53.1 innings pitched. (17 games)

If Kerry Wood does leave the Cubs this will be another move that has pushed the Reds closer to first place in the National League Central without them making any other moves. The Reds did get Sean Marshall and Mat Latos in trades earlier this offseason and are waiting to find out if they will re-sign closer Francisco Cordero but other than that they have not had to really do much more.

This has been one very interesting offseason for Reds fans. First we saw Albert Pujols along with manager Tony LaRussa leave St. Louis Cardinals. Prince Fielder is not expected to return to Milwaukee Brewers and Ryan Braun is expected to get a 50 game suspension due to testing positive for PEDs. The Chicago Cubs are cleaning house and are dealing away most of their high salary players like Carlos Zambrano and there are still rumors that Matt Garza might be next. Houston Astros are in a rebuilding year and are getting ready to move to the American League. Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds are the only teams in National League Central that have not been losing lots of their key players this offseason.

When I look over this list it makes me wonder what if the Cincinnati Reds front office could have seen into the future. Would they have picked differently? One thing to note is that Joey Votto was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in the 2nd round of the 2002 amateur draft.

Any Reds fan out there can tell you how disappointed they were to see Drew Stubbs strike out as much as he did in 2011. 205 strikeouts in 2011 put him 3rd overall in single season leaders for strikeouts, Mark Reynolds is 1st, 2nd and 4th. 223 being the highest single season record.

I wanted to look a little more into this and see exactly who struck Drew Stubbs out the most and it is very interesting to see what pitchers had the most fun against him in 2011. Ryan Dempster along with Matt Garza and Shaun Marcum top the list with 5 SO. All three of these pitchers gave Drew Stubbs nothing but problems in 2011. Stubbs only went 3 for 15 against Dempster and 3 for 13 against Garza while really struggling against Marcum by going 1 for 10. There were four pitchers that got 4 strikeouts against Stubbs in 2011. Chris Carpenter, Yovani Gallardo, Jair Jurrjens and Marco Estrada. His batting average against some of these pitchers was not as bad with the top three but he still went down swinging a lot. The next group of pitchers who got three strikeouts against Stubbs also only saw him a few times which really makes it interesting. With some pitchers he only had 4 plate appearances while striking out 3 times. Jason Grilli struck him out 3 times with 3 PA. After writing this, I honestly had to look up Jason Grilli just to see who he was. He played in 28 games for Pittsburgh Pirates getting 2 wins and 1 loss with a 2.48 ERA at 34 years old. He had a total of 37 strike outs in 32.2 innings pitched.

If Drew Stubbs batted 8th or 9th in the order for the Cincinnati Reds I am sure many of us would not have noticed that he was struggling so much but that was not the case for most of the season. He batted 1st and it was painful to watch this poor kid come up to bat every time. It was very clear to me, (as a fan) that he was just not very comfortable while he stood in the batters box. Sometimes it even looked like he was not even at the ball park that day. His mind seemed to be somewhere else many times. Joey Votto is a fun player to watch in the batters box. You can see him thinking about the next pitch and what was just thrown to him, he is always thinking up there. Drew Stubbs and sometimes Jay Bruce need to learn from Votto on that matter.

Like I said before, if he batted lower in the batting order I am sure we would not have noticed as much but he played over 95 games batting 1st getting a .250 BA, .329 OBP, .373 SLG with 131 SO and 44 walks. Once Dusty woke up and realized he was struggling Stubbs then batted 6th for 35 games and 7th for 12 games. What amazes me is that he only played 3 games batting 8th but with guys like Paul Janish in the order that explains it.

Leading off an Inning was very painful to watch when it came to Stubbs. As 1st batter in the game he had a .212 BA, .295 OBP and .282 SLG while getting 27 SO in 85 at bats. Leading off an inning he got .243 BA, .305 OBP and a .341 SLG while getting 63 SO in 214 AB.

Another thing I noticed is that the more times he saw a pitcher the better he got but it was usually to late. vs. SP for the 1st time he went 28 for 128 with 50 SO. 2nd time facing a SP he went 33 for 127 with 38 SO. He went 31 for 110 with 28 SO the 3rd time he faced a starter. And 4+ times facing a starter he went 11 for 31 with 14 SO. And as you can see it took him quite awhile to learn the pitcher and usually the team would bring in a relief pitcher before he did, in which case he went 41 for 199 with 72 SO against a RP the 1st time.

At first I thought maybe it was something to do with Great American Ball Park but he had just as much problem on the road as he did at home. In GABP he went 77 for 287 with 98 SO while going 70 for 317 with 107 SO on the road. Which shows that he had a way better batting average at home and that if he was traded he might not have a job for long on any other team. His speed is great and his fielding is not bad but if he can’t hit at this level he won’t last long on other teams.

The Reds have given chances to some of their young players over and over again in the past few years. Drew Stubbs and Homer Bailey are the two that really come to mind when I think about this. Stubbs was drafted by the Reds in the 1st round (8th pick) in the 2006 amateur draft and Homer Bailey was drafted by the Reds in the 1st round (7th pick) of the 2004 amateur draft. I have heard so many people praise these two men and some even say that they are the future of the Reds and that really scares me. Don’t get me wrong I wish they both would prove me wrong but I have not seen anything from either one lately to really impress me enough to say they are the Reds future and they have had their chances. I just hope the front office can even get anything of value from another team when they do finally decide to trade them.

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